Liu Xiang’s life insights: A hero’s blood is always just ketchup

About Liu Xiang’s life insights: The blood of a hero is always just ketchup

In the 2008 Olympic Games, Liu Xiang walked onto the runway with his head lowered. Since then, the wave has unfolded. That year you could see "Liu Paopao" and "Liu Tuitui" all over the Internet, the hatred for his high-profile style, the crusade against his endorsement ads, and "Spit it out after you eat it". Four years later, no matter how you play, Liu Xiang retires, you can still find the remarks made at that time.

A quite popular view is:

?Even if he doesn’t run, he still has to walk to the end!?

?There is indeed such a story in history. In the 1968 Mexico Olympics, Tanzanian runner John Ahwari injured his right foot during the marathon. He wrapped the bandage, then moved into the stadium step by step, completed the game, and left the famous sentence "My motherland sent me here from seven thousand miles away, not to hear the starting gun."

Is it painful? It doesn’t matter. The pain is on other people's legs, but the emotion is reserved for yourself. In the past, when movies first appeared, the audience would be frightened when they saw a car passing by; the silly love stories of the old silent movies could still make people burst into tears; but now, cutting meat to the bone may not be considered a heavy taste. Does a legend cease to be a legend if it is repeated again and again? No, no, this is an age of consuming pain. Pain, sorrow and death are just ketchup in the movie. A person's hard life may be exchanged for a touching repost on Weibo, but it will disappear in the next second.

What Liu Xiang did at the London Olympics in 2012 was the opposite of what he did in 2008. He did not give up. He ran away. He went down, injured, with a torn Achilles tendon. He walked back to the sidelines, then back again, bouncing all the way through the race and kissing the hurdles goodbye. This is simply like the intersection of fate in 2008 in another parallel universe.

What if you shouted something in 2008? If Liu Xiang ran away and was really injured, no one would scold him! Everyone blamed him because he was afraid of taking on the pressure and didn’t run away! Then, take a look at 2012 Good year:

He ran away and then injured his Achilles tendon, but it still didn’t stop the world from continuing to presume guilt and make assumptions. The world is so big, there are always people who want to be Conan by gathering a few pieces of evidence, although many questioning methods are more like Zhang Shaogang. Four years ago, Liu Xiang should have been like a hero who fell on the battlefield, even with injuries. Four years later, Liu Xiang finished his career and became an actor again. Achilles tendon injury? Ah, is that real or fake? Even if it is fake, there must be no pain at all, it is just ketchup!

In 1988, Li Ning was old and should retire. At a young age, I was forced to participate in the Olympics and failed. After returning to China, the enthusiastic audience sent me razor blades and ropes, calling me "Gymnastics Dead Son". I was sentenced to wiping my neck and hanging myself. Even the airport staff said: "There is no better way to fall. Go to the Olympics to fall!". After Liu Xiang fell down, this allusion was picked up by the BBC commentator as a joke? Of course, to the Chinese, this joke is not that funny. The problem is, being a hero isn't that easy. In the 2009 NBA Western Conference Semifinals, the first game of the Rockets VS Lakers, Yao Ming was injured before the game ended, walked into the aisle, and came back resolutely to lead the Rockets to a decisive victory. Two games later, the injury proved fatal. If you could go back to that time, would you like Yao Ming to come back as a hero, or simply take a rest?

A year ago, it was also the 2008 Beijing Olympics, and Yao Ming, who suffered a stress fracture less than half a year ago, came back early. , led the Chinese team to force the European king Spain into overtime, allowing China to reach eighth in the world for the last time. If you had the choice at that time, would you rather Yao Ming play a few more years, or come back early and fight for eighth place?

But the pain, injuries, and surgical conditions of athletes, especially Chinese athletes, have never been the same. Happens to the audience. For some people, they only watch the Olympic Games once every four years and the World Cup only once every four years; they occasionally know that there is the European Champions Cup final every May and the NBA Finals every June; for those who are more fashionable, they know that every two years There is the NFL Super Bowl every month, and the NCAA top 64 college basketball tournament is held every March.

They may not like sports that much. What they like is just the feeling: The player I like is one with me. His success means that I am successful, and his failure means that I have failed. Similarly, I Once the nasty player fails, that's my big win. ?That’s all.

In this era, what is very gratifying is that more and more people have understood that China’s competitive sports have its problems. There are also many helplessness behind the national system and gold medal heroes. The greatness of the champion does not mean the greatness of China. It does not mean that you are great. However, those who know the difference between champions and heroes often do not understand that former heroes are also mortals.

When Yao Ming retired last year, I wrote a short paragraph. There are always a group of sober truth emperors in the world who believe that Yao Ming is just a false and empty image created by the Chinese media and fans. In fact, the virtual attack target they set for themselves was not Yao Ming himself, but a concept, a label called "Yao Ming". The media publicity attached to Yao Ming and the ensuing Yao fans are their real targets. In many Yao black concepts, "Yao Ming" = "mainstream media" = "commercial bragging" = "some Yao fans who know little about the NBA". Some of Yao Hei's emotions can be summarized like this:

? The media is exaggerated, we are telling the truth, and the mediocre are ignorant, so we have to attack; attacking you and supporting people is tantamount to attacking. All of you? This kind of rebellious indignation that we will crack down on whatever the media boasts allows all kinds of carnival-style strife to continue.

For Liu Xiang, this principle is somewhat similar. Many attackers assume that I am exposing the truth and exposing commercial scams. The problem is that they tied Liu Xiang to the bigger thing behind Liu Xiang. When the evidence was not enough to establish, this sense of indignation against the "bigger thing" replaced the evidence. So it's a funny situation: so many people claim to hate politicization, but when something happens, the first thing they do is turn sports into politics.

A man who has set world records, won numerous championships, was one of the best 110-meter hurdles athletes in the past decade, and an excellent track and field veteran, lost the game in the Olympics? Such a simple statement Why is it difficult for many people to accept it? Because for a while, an ordinary track and field athlete was pushed to the level of a hero, so there were always people who were unwilling to let him go. This is like a situation I encountered when I was a child. An uncle said to me: Boy, your mother said that you can write a lot of words at the age of five. Please fill up this workbook and show it to me! I didn’t even think about it at the time. I thought about it, should I tell him? Why are you asking my mother for this kind of thing, why are you asking me?!? In this era, we must continue to consume heroes, whether it is the glory of the hero or the pain of the hero. Whether Liu Xiang runs or not should be considered a topic. You can say that no one forced him to run and he was injured. It was the organization's request that pushed him up; but in fact, this was a conspiracy. Some people regard him as a hero and totem, while another group of people really regard his career as a drama, which must be matched with a Hollywood-style ending to be perfect. The comparison between 2008 and 2012 is very clear: running or not running, the answer to fate is actually the same.

In "Let the Bullets Fly", Chen Kun proposed a vicious logic to Zhang Mo: If he wants to prove that he didn't eat secretly, he has to perform a caesarean section to prove it. This is pretty much the case for Liu Xiang: Regardless of whether he performs or not, why does he have to take the risk of injury and go on the court to do this? Because after the storm in 2008, he had to go on the court and run once. When he injured his Achilles tendon, let the audience witness it. , can he have an explanation? Of course, he still can't be innocent, because whether he is pretending or not, and how many of his actions are for show, he will still be questioned. Achilles tendon pain? The world doesn't care. For many TV viewers who watch the Olympics and the World Cup once every four years, and rely on occasional news and instant Baidu for sports knowledge, the blood of heroes will always be just ketchup.